Railgun OMFG

[frase]

Chinese already have one developed and functional, this with the Dark side of the moon landing also sending up a fake moon? Are they creating a Death Star?

 

[Moltuae]

Impressive yet depressing technology.

If our governments had put just half as much of our taxes into medical research as they have into finding new ways to kill more people, we'd likely have a cure for cancer (and many other common, life-threatening diseases) by now.

While I admire the technology, the application angers me. I mean, what the hell is wrong with humans? We should be working together to find ways to prevent our extinction, developing technologies to avert natural disasters on earth and advancing our ventures into space. Why do we (or rather, our governments) still put so much effort into killing one-another?

 

[hjelpio]

Politicians, regardless of country or affiliation, should focus on health care, education and taking care of the elders and veterans. Technology for good, a greener future and infrastructure should also be right up there. And the science fiction and nerd part of me: space exploration. Just depressing that going to the moon or Mars is a big meh atm.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It's an necessary evil. Railgun development has been going on for some time now, coupled also with aggressive development of laser weapons. "Defense" is a huge reason. We need something with its speed and range.
Chinas aggressive "ripoff/replicate/replace" approach for the past quite a few years has started putting them ahead of the curve. And Russia went back to their games of getting ahead of us a while ago too! We (the US..or any other country)...can no longer stay safe relying on old tech gunpowder technology as a defense.

 

[Diggs]

The Chinese are adopting it as the US drops it for many reasons....

 

[hjelpio]

IP theft, human rights violations, sketchy politics. Being a loan shark to African countries. And with China owning a sizable chunk of the US debt...

 

[fencepost]

I'm sure there are plenty of functional railgun demos that have been built, but the big issues probably fall into two categories: making them stable, sturdy and reliable and powering them.

Railguns are going to require some very high-tolerance engineering and control for the coils, and they're going to need to be very stable because if something gets a little out of kilter you may end up with a projectile that's not going quite straight and hits the rails. Rails holding the components imparting massive amounts of energy to projectiles are going to need to be very strong, and there's probably going to be a lot of waste energy (and heat) to be dissipated.

The other big factor is energy storage and transportation, the same thing that impacts gas, diesel and electric vehicles. Gunpowder and more advanced explosives have a really high energy density and can be refilled quickly; capacitors have relatively low energy capacity and ones capable of dumping the power required for a railgun within less than a second are going to be huge. It might be possible to deal with huge very short spikes of power demand in other ways, but nothing comes to mind right away except very careful sequencing of other power storage options most of which have higher ramp-up times than capacitors. I guess you could simply do massive battery arrays such that you could draw immediately from many at once, but those large arrays have their own problems ("large").

 

[Mercenary Roadie]

The US has had a functional railgun for some time now. Problem is the ammo for it is around $450K per round.

 

[frase]

Yes China has a habit of stealing tech, only poor African countries purchase military equipment from them. As they are cheap copies but unreliable, I think it was Nigeria purchased a Chopper like a Blackhawk, it crashed the first day due to a malfunction.

 

[Sky-Knight]

No Communist economy has ever demonstrated the quality control capabilities required to reliably produce advanced technology. I didn't even bother to watching the video, because it's opening up asking when the US will have one... we've HAD one, for years... Here's another video,

Note the posting date... Oct 2017...

We're using technology from that railgun for our new catapult systems on our carriers for crying out loud... we've move on to like version 3.0, and China is just now getting a 1.0 out? They aren't outpacing jack.

Honestly, I'm more worried about Russia's hypersonic cruise missiles. THOSE are an issue.

And for all you why can't we all just get along voices... yeah... give it up. Human nature drives us into tribal thinking at best. And while the US is generally benevolent, it's horribly corrupt, and the two other powers at play here simply don't value life... we aren't getting along... ever.

 

[frase]

bad day mate? Seem a bit angry... I understand though what I was saying was, China are trying to get very military not just in our oceans but in Space as well.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I'm not angry, just pointing out fact. And, yeah China is trying to expand it's military... every nation at that stage of development has done exactly the same. This is also not news, nor surprising. It's also not necessarily a bad thing... China has human rights issues sure, but they've been a bucket more reasonable in modern history about military matters than many other nations, at points even our own.

 

[Dean2]

As stated, it will never happen that all countries can work together. It comes down to Defence of your own country. China designs improved reactive armour to stop a US Tank round. US design a new battle tank capable of penetrating that armour. It is a vicious circle that will never stop. Saying that is also creates jobs.

Just glad I live in Australia lol.

 

[HFultzjr]

This is just like "Stealth Technology". By the time we "hear" about it, it has already been in development for YEARS. We will never really know what the NEWEST technology is. Hell, they are probably so far past this, that our heads would spin.